One Must Wait

Carole Ann Gibson #1

by Penny Mickelbury

One Must Wait, the first book in what is certain to be a new series about African American defense attorney Carole Ann Gibson, starts as she labors to convince a jury that her client, a Washington, D.C., cop named Tommy Griffin, really is innocent--unlike most of the criminals she gets off the hook. Carole Ann's husband, Alain Crandall, works for a corporate law firm with even nastier clients, especially an outfit called Parish Petroleum. Carole Ann and Al decide to quit their jobs and find some area of the law that they can stomach, but Al is killed in a mugging shortly after announcing his intentions. When a sympathetic cop looking into the mugging is shot in the back and paralyzed, Gibson realizes that something more than street crime is involved in her husband's death. Following Al's footsteps into the Louisiana swamps, Carole Ann untangles threads of oil, blood, and money. Fortunately, Penny Mickelbury is such a subtle and imaginative writer that she can take this venerable genre cliché and turn it into an extremely moving and exciting journey of ethnic and moral discovery.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Mickelbury is a former newspaper, radio and television reporter based primarily in Washington, D.C. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, she lives in Los Angeles. The novelist and former journalist also is an accomplished playwright whose work has won awards. Two of her Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione novels are Lammy finalists. She is the recipient of the Audre Lorde Estate Grant, and she had a residency at the Hedgebrook Women Writers colony.